


Stolen Lives

by Jaune_Chat



Category: Heroes (TV)
Genre: Blood and Gore, Death, Gen, Guilt, Horror, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-15
Updated: 2012-11-15
Packaged: 2018-04-24 17:58:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4929547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jaune_Chat/pseuds/Jaune_Chat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sylar’s demons come for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stolen Lives

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a drabble contest, theme "Demons." Spoilers for most of the series.

They’re coming.

One by one, inch by inch, first on the street outside his apartment. Then in the hall by the laundry room. Once inside the safety of his room, he hears them shuffling around outside his window. Scratching at the glass, rattling the windows, trying to turn the doorknob, pawing, clawing, pushing, pounding. 

Dead, all of them dead.

He’s forgotten half of their names, if he even knew them in the first place. But Brian Davis was the first, a sad-sack of a man, pale face full of fear over his ability, terrified and hoping Gabriel Gray could save him.

Sylar had seen what lain inside that precious brain, and opened his skull with a chunk of rock. Saving Brian from his fear, and himself from a life of mediocrity. 

Sylar saw him first, shuffling along the street, dead-blind eyes looking right at him in the darkness that permeated his neighborhood at two a.m. Rotten blood dripped from the crack in his skull, spattering against dirty and torn clothing, streaked with earth like he’d pulled himself from the grave.

Sylar had frozen, looked, and looked again, lightning sparking from his hands as he tried to see what couldn’t possibly be there. The white light flashed off of Elle’s blonde hair, wet with seawater, sand clinging to her skin, blood streaking her in stripes.

He didn’t remember screaming, but he remembered trying to push them away, drive them away from him, mind shoving out in a well-rehearsed defensive move. Brian went flying backwards, dead eyes never straying from Sylar’s, but Elle continued to advance, an impish smile on her bloody face.

Sylar knew he said her name, ripping it from his throat in a scream, and let her own lightning skewer her through. Elle went sprawling, the sparks illuminating her as she staggered back upright, electricity dancing in her palms. Sylar snarled, a sound compounded from as much fear as anger, as Elle’s ability illuminated her chalky-pale flesh. Behind her, the light revealed others. The mechanic from Montana, Trevor Zeitlan, Zane Taylor, a line of the dead, their heads split, gaping, old wounds showing his old sins. Shuffling towards him, each and every one of them with a hunger in their eyes. It was a weapon in and of itself, their bloody wounds, their gaping, open mouths, their clouded and crazed eyes, and it shattered through every façade of certainty that Sylar had about the world.

Logic deserted him. Common sense fled before the fear. Even his own ability saw no way to fix this.

Like a child determined to avoid monsters by hiding under the covers, Sylar ran into his apartment building. Alejandro’s dark eyes, clouded in death, glared at him from the hallway by the stairs, and behind him ranged Elle’s father, Jesse from Level Five, even the shapeshifter that had been his salvation and downfall in one. Their feet scraped the linoleum as they reached for him, mouths open as if wanting to devour him in a bite.

“Get away! _Get away!_ ”

Sylar flew up the stairs, closing and triple-locking his door behind him, and turned as something scratched on the glass by the fire escape. Sue Landers, who’d given him the ability to sort lies from truth, and Chaundra Suresh, who’d discovered the truth about him in the first place. Someone else rattled the door, and Sylar turned to look through the peephole, heart pounding and sweat slicking his skin. Mother, her cardigan dyed crimson with blood, stared back at him.

He sprang back from the door and fled for his bedroom, afraid to use his powers, afraid of the lure that might make for them, for all the people he’d stolen them from. Taken their lives, their abilities, giving him the purpose and prizes to which he’d felt entitled.

Dry-mouthed and nauseous, he turned to look at the window of his bedroom, afraid of what he would see.

Claire, her brain exposed, her blonde hair auburn with blood, Luke, bruised and abraded with the rough treatment of Sylar’s uncertain temper, and Matt, mind and reputation shredded by Sylar’s need for revenge, clawed at the glass, rattling the window in its frame.

“You’re alive!” he protested, back against the wall. “I left you alive!”

His words wouldn’t convince them. They certainly didn’t convince him. 

The wanting hunger in their eyes was what Sylar had seen staring at him from the bathroom mirror for half his life, that unquenchable desire to learn more, _become_ more. And now they wanted that too. They wanted the mind, the brain that had given him the desire to possess greatness at all costs.

Sylar had taken nothing, he realized, only borrowed from the cruelest loan shark of all, karma.

He wondered if there would be enough to go around when they finally broke through.

His bedroom door rattled and swung open, revealing Nathan standing in the dim and uncertain light, his throat a red ruin, dark eyes blue with death. 

As Nathan advanced on him, other familiar faces ranged behind him, exposed heads or gaping wounds a portfolio of Sylar’s life, he prayed this was all a nightmare. Maybe when they’d taken it all back, there would still be something left of him. 

He didn’t think so; luck had never been amongst the lives he’d stolen.


End file.
